The Good Professor
by joudama
Summary: A series of mid- to long-length drabbles, all focusing on Professor Hojo.
1. Paperwork and Plots

**Title:** Paperwork and Plots

**Prompt:** Hojo having very little patience for anything outside of science, like paperwork.

--

While Professor Hojo very much enjoyed his status as the head of his lab in the science department, there were times when he thought he would gladly trade it in for the the positions of his underlings. While they were maddeningly and feverishly writing research papers for submissions, to gain notoriety and future positions much like the one Hojo himself held, he was stuck doing paperwork. All of his brilliance, wasted on monotonous forms and directing others--it had been weeks since he had even stepped food in his labs, and had been forced to pick the least incompetent of his staff to do his work.

Incensed, he made up his mind.

"Dr. Crescent," he said, looking up when she came in with the latest results--results of his own research, research he wasn not even able to oversee, even though it was his brilliance that was creating it--"Do something for me, will you?"

She blinked. "Professor?"

"I've decided. I can get nothing done here. I am going to do science, not paperwork," he said, and she smiled slightly at the way he spat out 'paperwork,' and Hojo found himself imagining her beneath him, writhing with her hair mussed, and her legs wrapped around his waist.

It made quite the nice image.

"So what are you going to do?" she said.

"One last bit of paperwork," he said, and felt his lips curving up slightly. "Forms on the relocation of the labs."

"And what do you want me to do?"

He gave her another smile, calculating in his head. "You are the only one I trust not to botch my precious samples in the move," he said, and she flushed a faint pink.

It seemed this had been a good idea in more than one way, he decided, and wondered how many more flattering words of praise it would take for her to end up in his bed.


	2. Playing Your Cards Right

**Title:** Playing Your Cards Right

**Prompts:** Hojo vs Gast back before Gast left Shinra/Hojo + his ideas of parenting

**AN:** This oddly enough kind of fits in with what I have planned for the Hojo sefira in Ein Sof. And ties in with me knowing a wee bit about how babies develop, and Failure to Thrive syndrome. As always, I think too much. ^^;;

--

The one damnable thing about Lucretia being gone was that he had planned for _her_ to be the one caring for Project S.

It was not in him to do all the ridiculous things mothers did for their offspring, and things which, as painful as it was to admit, were very necessary for infant development. And the very thought of all his hard work going up in smoke because no one would _play_ with Project S made Hojo want to bang his head against a brick wall.

He'd thought getting Lucretia out of the way before her ridiculous 'maternal instincts' kicked in even more--he knew he was going to have to get rid of her when she started referring to Project S as 'their son' and 'her baby'--but Project S's dramatically dropping weight and reactions were showing that he obviously had not figured everything.

He frowned. He supposed he could manage to charm one of the prettier young women in the lab into doing whatever it was women did with babies beyond feeding them that made them grow, and if he played his cards right--and he _always_ played his cards right in that respect--then at least he would also get laid sooner rather than later. It was becoming ridiculous at this point--to both the fact that Project S was deteriorating just because it wasn't being played with and that he hadn't gotten laid since before Project S had been born.

"Well, what's wrong with you?" a voice said suddenly, and Hojo suppressed the urge to snap at the insufferable Dr. Gast that he could ask him the same thing, when he realized Gast wasn't even talking to him.

He was talking to Project S.

"Aww, now, you look like you need some attention!" Gast said, and Hojo felt his hands clench at how Gast had so quickly noticed what was _lacking_ in what should have been _Hojo_'s masterpiece. As always. Gast was always one step ahead, somehow, and it made him hate the man. How had Gast known...?

Gast was completely ignoring him, and reached down through the medical bad where Project S was supposed to be doing whatever it was babies did. "Oh you poor thing. You must be so bored!" Gast said, and without so much as a word to Hojo, picked up Project S and started rocking with him, keeping eye contact and talking to the infant. "There's nothing for you to look at at all!"

Gast kept a steady string of words to the infant, to the point where Hojo was about ready to tell him to kindly shut up so he could thing, when Project S made a faint sound back, as if responding. He looked over sharply, carefully, and saw Project S was staring straight at Gast, in a way it hadn't looked at anything in a while.

Gast looked over at him, as if he realized he was being watched, and his eyes narrowed angrily. "Hojo, are you a bloody fool? This is a child, not just a ridiculous experiment! Are you trying to stunt his development? An infant needs constant stimulation, not just laying in a bed surrounded by white nothingness! And have you ever even picked the poor thing up for anything other than weighing him?"

"My expertise, alas, is not in child development."

"This doesn't require a degree, it requires a heart!" Gast snapped.

Hojo felt his anger begin to boil, and hid it behind a bland expression.

Gast looked back down at Project S. "You poor thing. And...oh, whoa, I think you need a change there!"

Gast looked back at Hojo. "Where are the diapers?" he snapped, and Hojo gestured towards a drawer. Gast shot him a dirty look, then went over, took out a diaper and the other supplies, and began changing Project S's spoiled ones, all the while murmurring to it.

"All better now!" Gast said cheerfully, and tickled Project S's belly.

And in Hojo's head, a small voice started _laughing_.

Let Gast do this bit--this 'mothering' the infant needed to thrive. In the end, Project S was only that, a project, and if this was necessary, well... One thing he had learned, with Lucretia, was how easily people who couldn't accept that would become attached to a "baby." And if that attachment gave him another level of control, a way to keep Gast under his thumb...

"Well. If you feel I am so useless," Hojo said with a sneer, "I will leave..._him_ to you," he said, and walked out in a mock huff.

On his way out, Hojo looked back over his shoulder, just enough to see, out of the corner of his eyes, how Gast looked back at Project S and smiled at him, and Hojo pushed up his glasses to cover a smirk.

He _always_, after all, played his cards right.


	3. Getting the Knack of It

**Title:** Getting the Knack of It

**Prompt:** Hojo as a child and what brought him into the halls of science.

--

"He's such a smart and curious boy!"

It was the one refrain he heard the most, as a child. At it was definitely true--he was very curious.

And very, very smart.

He had always wondered how things worked. His mother used to tell stories, laughingly, about how even as a four or five year old, he'd always tried to take things apart and then put them back together again in different ways.

First it had been his toy trains, then the clock in the foyer. At first, it was a disaster, and he'd been spanked more than once for 'breaking' things, before he got the knack of it. But once he got the knack of it, well, after he had that, he always had varying degrees of success with everything mechanical, and soon could take apart and rebuild, better than before, nearly everything in his room.

It was a pity, alas, that his success didn't carry across when he tried to do the same thing to the cat, and he swore that next time, he would get the knack of it.


	4. Valuable ShinRa Property

**Title:** Valuable ShinRa Property

**Prompt:** Hojo gives Seph The Talk.

--

Hojo clinched his jaw tightly. "The idiots in charge of the war," Hojo said tightly, "have declared that you will be sent to Wutai to fight."

Project S's eyes lit up, and Hojo's scowl deepened.

"When am I to be deployed?" S asked, his voice finally having settled from the occasionally fits and starts of the changes puberty was bringing to his body.

It was those very changes that Hojo feared.

"In two weeks," Hojo said. "And before then, your training will be tripled, because I will not risk losing all of my hard work through a lucky shot on some Wutai's soldier's part," he said angrily. Project S--Sephiroth, he supposed he should use now, now that S was no longer confined to his labs--narrowed his eyes at that, as if angry that Hojo would think he would lose. "I have spent too much work and too much funding has been spent for you to die."

"I will not."

"Good," Hojo said flatly. "And there is something else you will not do."

Sephiroth stared at him.

"You will be going into the military. To be surrounded by nothing but imbeciles and grunts of the lowest variety. They lack the brains to do anything but kill. Or rather, anything but kill and _fuck_."

Sephiroth stared at him more, frowning slightly at Hojo's last word--which made sense, Hojo thought, since S had never heard the word before as anything other than the occasional muffled curse from a scientist, and so had no idea what the word meant. But out there, surrounded by fools who only knew how to fight and _rut, _it was certain S would learn far, far too quickly.

And Hojo had spent too much time and effort to let anyone reap _his_ rewards.

"You will be surrounded by people with no thoughts in their heads but killing and engaging in sex with whatever women they find, and you will find yourself surrounded as well by women who will trade sex for money or food, or will simply be slower than the troops invading their villages," Hojo said shortly, pushing up his glasses. "And you will not engage in _any_ of it."

"I will not," he snapped, "not run any risk of you leaving any genetic offspring in Wutai, especially since if they discovered that offspring, they would try to us it against us. The only one, after all, who would be capable of defeated one of my perfect experiments would be something of the same genetic stock. And that can not be allowed. You are valuable ShinRa property, down to every last _cell_ your body produces. And you will not engage in any activities that will risk ShinRa...or, more importantly, _my hard work_. I will not allow you to give away what I worked so hard to develop."

Hojo stood, walked over to one of the storage cabinets, and pulled out a glass container. He walked over to Sephiroth and handed it to him. "You will produce a sperm sample so we have it on hand," he said flatly. It was all he needed, after all--he would have it freeze-dried and put into storage. "And you will leave none _anywhere_ else."

If there was one hint, at all, of Project S having no control over himself when the Wutai whores went after him, then Hojo would do what he would have to to protect his intellectual properties. He would not have Project S leaving behind unaccounted for something as valuable as the gametes his body produced.

S tightened his hand against the container, a faint look of disgust on his face before he stood up and walked towards the room Hojo pointed at for him to go.

A single sign, Hojo thought when the door shut behind S, and he would have his project sterilized. Even without viable sperm cells from S--Hojo could always, after all, simply clone S should he have need of it.

He would protect, after all, what was _his_.


	5. The Perks of the Job

Title: The Perks of the Job

Prompt: A young, up-and-coming-scientist Hojo being the utter heart throb of ShinRa.

Word Count: 299

Summary: He's going to like working here...

"Welcome to the ShinRa science division," Dr. Gibson said, and Hojo smiled faintly, in something almost more akin to a smirk.

For a brief moment, what Dr. Gibson had _planned_ to say completely flew out her head, and the first coherent thought she had was, "...I am a pedophile for what I just thought. Hojo is only 23! You're nearly twice his age!"

She coughed delicately. "Sorry, lost my train of thought, there. You will be assigned to the biomedical division, under myself and Dr. Onitsuka. I have nothing but the highest expectations for you!" she said brightly, and vowed to make sure it was mainly Dr. Onitsuka in charge of young Dr. Hojo, before she made a damned fool of herself.

"I look forward to learning all you can teach me," Hojo said smoothly, and damned if that man didn't have the sexiest smirk she had ever seen.

It did not take long for word to spread about one of the science department's newest hires, a young Dr. Hojo, to spread through the secretarial pool. Most of the scientists were older and not of interest, but Hojo, the youngest of the three newest hires in biomed, with is long, dark hair and a smile that made even foul-tempered Dr. Gibson turn bright red, definitely made that division a lot more noteworthy.

For the first time, there was actual competition for who got to deliver anything down to the labs, and more than one secretary had decided that she was going to somehow snag him.

By the time he'd gotten his second love letter and third proposition, and Dr. Gibson seeming very…_open _to exploring some of his theories when given the right incentive, Hojo thought to himself that he was rather going to enjoy working for ShinRa.


End file.
